In today’s society, sport is valued and encouraged by society. However, thanks to a craze of researchers in recent years on this topic, it has been argued that the intensive practice of sport wasn’t without risk to health. Indeed, elite athletes, who practice intensively, are particularly affected by this problem because of performance constraints included by their status. These risks concern particularly eating behaviours for these athletes. In fact, two types of eating disturbances have been outlined among high-level athletes :
- The first is inverse anorexia (also called muscular dysmorphia). Inverse anorexia refers to men and women and is defined by the subjects’ belief that they are small and weak even though they are normal or even broad and muscular. This form of eating disturbance is often find in the environment of bodybuilding
- The second is called athletic anorexia. Athletic anorexia can be defined as a state of reduced energy intake and weight loss despite a good level of physical performance.
In the study of Rousselet & collaborators (2016), 340 french high-level athletes aged in average 17 were included. They were practice divers type of sports. The data were collected from the somatic assessment, the dietary consultation, and the psychological assessment of the Statutory Medical Monitoring. Their results show that 32.9% of the participants suffer from eating disturbances.
The causes of these problematics are multifactorial. First, some of these athletes want to respond to beauty standards by extreme ways. Secondly, we find some personality traits in common between high-level athletes and people who suffer from eating disorder like perfectionism, low self-estim and obsessional compulsive tendency which are risks factors in development of eating disorders. These personality traits are encouraged by coaches because they judge them necessary to win.
One of the brakes which limit the understanding of these phenomenons is that there is no adapted questionnaire about these forms of eating disturbances. Furthermore, the tools which exist are often more adapted to women than for men. That’s why we need more research about this topic to offer a better support to the people who suffer to be in these problematics.
Vocabulary :
Craze = engouement
Brake = frein
Bibliography :
Rousselet, M., Guérineau, B. Paruit, M.C., Guinot, M. Lise, S., Destrube, B., Ruffio-Thery, S., … Pretagut, S. (2016). Disordered eating in French high-level athletes : association with type of sport, doping behavior, and psychological features. Eating Weight Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-016-0342-0
Anaëlle VADON – Albane DOUCET – Emma FOIREST